I recently had the opportunity to write for Fictionista Workshop, an online community for female writers, which is pretty badass. My piece was about feminism and chick lit, which I didn't think was an overly-controversial topic. I thought I had examined the issue from every angle and reached a pretty moderate conclusion: while chick lit doesn't represent a very vast swath of the female experience, it's not exactly repressive. And yet, a commenter still managed to log in and declare that my essay was a white, middle-class piece of trash. WELL.
I'm not upset about the comment - that is one piece of unnecessarily-negative feedback, and all my other interactions with the ladies of Fictionista have been great. Although I might note that anyone who thinks that I'm middle class should take a look into my naked pantry before they go pointing fingers.
Granted, criticism is something all writers should be prepared to deal with - especially in the online community, where anyone with an internet connection can log in and declare your work unsatisfactory. But, in my experience with online feminist communities, the ice seems to be even thinner than it is elsewhere.
For example, quite awhile ago, I posted a blog on Feministing.com about my eyebrows. I definitely got more positive feedback than negative, but one user seemed to be really upset that I had used the word "she-man" when describing how people reacted to my decision to quit plucking my eyebrows. I certainly didn't mean to offend, and I had never dreamed that using that word in an anecdote would turn someone off to my whole piece. As someone who hadn't been a part of the feminist blogosphere for very long, I was left feeling pretty discouraged.
The fact is that, when it comes to online feminist communities, it's really easy to lose your footing. First, this has a lot to do with society: for the most part, we never even realize how anti-woman our everyday speech can be. But, secondly, this has to do with the online feminist presence that can sometimes be very quick to criticize perceived prejudice, whether the author intended it or not.
Do I think that we should make a point to educate writers about negative language that they may not realize is offensive to others? Absolutely. But maybe there are gentler ways to do it than many of the ones I've seen - and I'm not just bitterly referring to my own writing here. Woman-friendly sites like FictionistaWorkshop.com, Feministing.com and the many others like them all provide an excellent platform for women to gain strength by interacting with one another. But we lose a part of that bond when, as commentators, we are quick to attack our fellow woman. As feminists in a patriarchy, it can be easy to be on the defensive, but, if we don't let our guard down and give our fellow woman the benefit of a doubt, it will make joining together to change the world that much more difficult.
